EDITORIAL: The ROC Constitution: Sense, caution
Taiwan New Constitution Foundation founder Koo Kwang-ming (辜寬敏), expressing frustration at what he says is President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) and the government’s reluctance to write a new constitution, on Sunday announced his intention to resign as Presidential Office adviser.
For Koo, a new constitution, for democratic Taiwan, is an indispensable step in the nation’s normalization.
He is absolutely correct in this, but that does not necessarily mean it is the direction the government should take the nation at this juncture.
The Republic of China (ROC) Constitution was not written with Taiwan’s topography, population, political or legal system, size or history in mind. It was written in, and for, another country entirely, maintained in Taiwan originally with the expectation that the exiled Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime would return to China, and later to bolster the fiction that the ROC of the past, under the leadership of the KMT party-state, still bears relevance today.